Snooze on the Train Without Missing Your Stop With This Handy New App

Thanks, we love being enabled!

We’re still waiting patiently for the long-awaited advent of the Second Avenue subway, an infrastructural punchline since semiconductors were a hot new thing.

But in the meantime, at least we’ve got our smartphones to arrest our sneaky hate spirals. There’s four days left to vote on the entries in the MTA’s AT&T-backed App Quest contest, and the 49 candidates are almost enough to make you forget about all the time you’ve ever spent waiting for the G train.

Almost.

Fast Companypoints to one gem in particular, called MetroNap. Built by a former Bitly employee, it’s designed specifically to enable your habit of taking quick cat-naps on your way home from the bar at 4 a.m. And people complain because we never got those silly jetpacks.

The app uses your phone’s accelerometer to track your progress along your route, and right before your stop, it’ll vibrate so as to jar you from you slumber. Please note, drunkards, that this really isn’t designed for, you know, bourbon-induced naps. Nor does it equip your iPhone with a taser that’ll shock anyone who tries to pick your pocket while you’re conked out. You pay your money, you take your chances.

Also in the running: an app to track how much money’s left on that Metrocard and another that tells you what kind of bars are aboveground.

You got four days to vote for your favorite app; the applicants are up for $50K in prize money. If you need this devoted rider of the Q18 in the meantime, I’ll be voting for all the bus-tracking apps, over and over and over again.

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